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With all the applications that exist to bring us closer together, share our important life stories, and help us to communicate…. sometimes the sheer diversity of apps can ironically make it difficult to actually meet up. We’d rather socialise over the internet.

Calio, a calendar app that helps you integrate all your work and social engagements, calls itself a ‘calendar for real life’, as it removes the pressure of social media, with its straightforward functionality; and makes it easy to follow and gain advance notice of events from your favourite brands or influencers, and pop them instantly in a diary which is integrated with existing applications.

Calio is currently fundraising for £300k in seed capital to fund its expansion plan into a range of offerings for users, including importable sport and leisure events which can be integrated with your Outlook or Google Calendar. Among its interested parties is the US sports channel ESPN.

The Calio management team revealed that an ESPN AdTechmanager told them in an email: “One area I can definitely see a connection is to power our global ad sales business. We are always being asked for a calendar of upcoming sports events by brands and agencies, and believe it or not we don’t have a go-to solution.”

Another area that Calio is looking to provide solutions for is travel; despite the popularity of discount holiday package sites like SecretEscapes.com and LastMinute.com, there are still 6k travel agents in the UK and millenials form a key part of their usership.

Calio users would be able to import event calendars and gain advance notification of when their favourite companies or brands announce new dates or release tickets. With an existing user base of 9k, on the back of considerable word of mouth and minimal advertising, its creators have an engaged community they can monetise through these and more traditional offerings such as ticketing and sponsored events for client companies. Brands and companies can personalise their events, and the team also wants to offer users the chance to personalise their calendar with different design themes.

The app aims to integrate with existing social apps to provide a platform which is just about meeting up.

Not about competing to see which among your friendship group can get the most Instagram likes (hey, maybe my friends are just shallow)

Not about who can create the longest comment stream on Facebook.

You don’t need a hashtag to publicise it.

Ramy Al-Khadi, who runs an app design company with his co-founder Latif Baluch, explained their motivation, “There used to be a beautiful app called Sunrise, which let you sync its calendar app with all other apps. Outlook bought them for £100million. They closed Sunrise down, and converted the user base to Outlook…. We saw a gap in the market, and while we’ve created a number of apps before — it’s what we’re in the business of doing — with this one it was something we thought people would really need.”

For event promoters, it is difficult to gain a following on incumbent social media platforms saturated by content and dominated by better established — and better funded — competitors. According to this marketing blog organic reach for brands and pages on FB is just 2%, partly as they have changed the algorithm so the news feed reflects your social interactions, with less branded content.

So even if you have 2000 facebook friends and outwardly look a very well connected individual, only 200 of those will even bother paying attention to your facebook posts promoting the event. Granted, the organisers offer very cost-effective advertising you can target by interest or demographic, but it is not as effective as marketing to an audience with a demonstrated interest in your offering.

Facebook came under fire recently in a story broken by the Australian, where it was revealed it was profiling teenagers and sharing information with advertisers about their friend count, the frequency they accessed the platform with and how they expressed their emotions and varying emotional states throughout the week. Calio has gained a following partly through being the anti social media platform, commissioning a street art exhibition on the social evils of ‘social’ media. I reviewed the exhibition on my personal blog.

Then there are the sinister alterior uses that social platforms put your data to. Spotify has revealed lately that it is able to target advertising according to your mood, which is useful to those buying advertising space because when you are feeling sad, studies have found, you are more likely to be in a spending mood…

The Spotify team is also fond of using your private listening habits to build a psychological profile of you to more effectively target ads — apparently if you listen to Justin Bieber’s ‘What do you Mean?’ you are statistically more likely to be a psychopath. Not entirely sure if this sort of activity is the use of my personal data I consented to under the GDPR…. I mean, I use the Hip Hop latest hits playlist to lift weights to but to the casual observer does that mean I’m into gangs, fast cars and abusive behaviour toward women?

If you have registered your interest in following an event — say, the Premier League, or gigs by a certain musician — you will be notified when it is occurring and it will be automatically added to your calendar. You can use Calio as a social diary, which unlike existing social media is personal to you and designed to suit your needs and preferences. Best of all, no one is mining your data and doing unqualified psychoanalytic profiling of you!

SFOX is an advanced crypto-currency trading platform, which aims to replicate the facilities offered to ‘sophisticated investors’ in traditional finance, allowing real-time price arbitration between the main and more minor digital currencies, such as itbit, gemini, bitfinex, bitstamp and more. ‘Our algorithms love volatility’, it declares proudly on its twitter page.
It offers similar styles of trades to the ‘iceberg’ trade offered by the big financial exchanges, where an order remains hidden until it is placed; this they call the ‘Sniper’ trade. The ‘Gorilla’ algorithm lets you break up a large order and distribute it in bite-size chunks throughout the day.
One unnamed investor believes they are one to bet on this year. In Jan 25, 2017, according to its listing on Crunchbase, SFOX raised an Unknown Amount for a ‘venture at an unknown valuation.’

Chain

Chain has positioned itself as the market leader for integrating blockchain technology into financial services infrastructure. It was the chosen business partner for a joint venture between Citi and Nasdaq in May 2017, to use the blockchain to make and verify certain cross-border transactions.
Adena Friedman, CEO, Nasdaq, said of the partnership, “Through this effective integration of blockchain technology and global financial systems, we can realize greater operational transparency and ease of reconciliation, which can have profound implications for outdated administrative functions in the capital markets.”
It claims it can facilitate a development platform for all foreseeable asset types, and its blockchain technology was made open-source in 2016, making it easy for companies to install the Chain OS and build their own in-house solution. Its blockchain platform looks to become the Microsoft of the fintech world.

SABR.io

SABR.io describes itself as ‘Palantir for the blockchain’, and has been similarly gaining ground among law enforcers for its ability to do end-to-end analytics on blockchain applications and related locations; tracking payment services and identifying suspicious patterns and activity. Because while Distributed Ledger Technology is indelible and publicly accessible, the accounts by which it is accessed can be forged or faked.
SABR.io does an important job in ensuring those interacting with the technology are legal entities, enabling compliance with Anti Money Laundering obligations and prohibiting trading with sanctioned institutions or individuals.

To defend glyphosate, the firm has taken the issue to the United Nations Against Cancer, which has classed its flagship product cancerous. Second section of our inquiry.

It had promised “more inoffensive than the salt on the table”, but that was just in its adverts. Glyphosate, the herbicide most widely used on the planet, the principal ingredient in its flagship product, the Roundup, on which it has based its business model, its fortune and reputation, sold for more than forty years and becoming a best-seller with the development of transgenic seeds called “Roundup ready”, could be in reality cancerous.

On 20 March 2015, Monsanto was visibly affected. On that day, glyphosate was declared genetically toxic (it damages DNA), cancerous to animals and “likely cancerous” to people, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

The jury: a group of 17 seasoned experts of 11 nationalities, assembled by this official agnec of the UN charged with compiling an inventory of cancerous substances et whose opinion has been the authority for almost half a century. There is therefore no doubt that this will also be the case for their conclusions on glyphosate, published in the form of a report, ‘monograph 112’

Declaration of War

Far from sight, the fury of the American firm crossed the Atlantic by fibre-optic. The same day, a missive amounting to a declaration of war parted for Geneva, in Switzerland, directed to the World Health Organisation, the umbrella body of the IARC

The paper bore at its head the celebrated green branch surrounded by an orange rectangle: the Monsanto logo. “We seem to understand that the members of the CIRC have deliberately chosen to ignore the numerous studies and regulatory evaluations publicly available which support the conclusion that glyphosate does not present a risk to human health”, accused Philip Miller, the vice president of Monsanto charged with regulatory affairs.

Right of asylum, immigration quotas, border controls.. a deep fracture has emerged between the candidates.

It’s a record in French history: France has recorded 85, 700 requests for asylum in 2016. Even if it’s small in relation to its neighbours Italy (121, 200) and Germany (722, 300), this influx of migrants, because of the war in Syria and historic conflicts or humanitarian situations (the Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti), have forced the question of the welcome that France can or should reserve at the centre of the presidential campaign.

But if the questions about borders, integration or identity have gained an important place in the campaign, the responses that the candidates have raised in their programmes are sparse (a hundred proposals to more than three thousand in total) and very polarised. A France open or closed, here are the main promises of the 11 candidates for the presidential election.

Borders in and around Europe

According to the Schengen agreement, all citizens can move freely within the eponymous zone (26 states of which 22 are part of the European Union). And on the exterior, the agency Frontex tries to maintain surveillance faced with the influx of migrants.

The borders question is typically an embarrassing one for candidates, outside the extreme right, faced simultaneously with the humanitarian crisis of the migrants, but also by the high-stakes surveillance of terrorist movements.

On the extreme right, the positions have the merit of clarity: Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Marine Le Pen think that control of immigration is no longer secured by Frontex and that they should exit Schengen to take back national borders, which would consequently be reinforced. They believe therefore six thousand customs posts should also be reinstated, according to the Front National candidate, which demands also the recall of the reservists.

Calling for a double layer of borders, Francois Fillon says he is in favour of staying in Schengen (and in tripling the budget of Frontex), but also to the “temporary reintroduction of controls on the interior borders” (an operation in reality already in place since the events of November 2015).

In opposition, there are those who think the actual borders of Schengen are already sufficient: Benoit Hamon, Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Melenchon. But with certain nuances since Emmanuel Macron wanted to increase the powers of border guards and outposts in Europe, while Jean-Luc Melenchon wanted what he termed the “militarisation of the politics of controlling migration flows.”

The extreme left believes to want to abolish all borders, both on the interior and exterior of the European Union – say Nathalie Arthaud and Philippe Poutou, in a spirit which is “internationalist” and “in solidarity”.

The Right to Asylum

In the face of crowds of migrants, the practical application of the right to asylum, a principle enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution, is a question of debate among the political class. It is anyway on this question that ghost of the candidates’ previous promises looms largest: where Nathalie Arthaud and Philippe Poutou supported regularising all the sans-papiers, Marine Le Pen and Nicolas Dupon-Aignan want, in contrast, to make the conditions of asylum harder. The candidate from Debout la France is proposing a dozen measures to allocate a residence to asylum-seekers. The Front National candidate, le Pen, insists on the necessity of “making it impossible to regularise or naturalise foreigners in an illegal situation.”

Between these two opposing poles, two candidates declare they favour welcoming asylum-seekers, notably in instituting a humanitarian visa (Benoit Hamon) and in constructing welcome camps along international norms (Jean-Luc Melenchon). Three other candidates want to shorten the delay in the administrative response (Emmanuel Macron, Jacques Cheminade and Francois Fillon). It is therefore on the specific public services the refugees can access on which the majority of candidates have made promises.

On Quotas

In 2016, around 227 500 foreigners gained their first right to stay in France, an increase of 4.6% in relation to 2015. A rise which lies principally in admissions for humanitarian reasons. These permissions were not limited by quotas; France has never applied such a limitation, in contrast to the US for example. A majority of candidates are not in favour ( Nathalie Arthaud, Jacques Cheminade, Benoit Hamon, Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Melenchon and Philippe Poutou).

Among them those who have no fixed position: Jean Lassalle and Francois Asselineau. This last is content to propose a referendum on the whole group of questions lying in various degrees in relation to the volumes of migrants – quotas, familial regroupment, right to own land…

Three candidates are in support of quotas. The most extreme position is, with no surprise, that of Marine Le Pen, who recommends “reducing legal immigration to an annual cap of 10 thousand (persons).” She is following on the platform of Francois Fillon, who wanted to inscribe it in the Constitution, and of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who wants “to vote annually in Parliament an immigration ceiling” related to the unemployment rate.

In 2006, Nicolas Sarkozy had already fostered support for establishing quotas, but this ambition faced opposition, risking the censure of the constitutional council, and was adjourned.

The Right of Soil

The right of earth consists of conferring French nationality on children born in France More precisely, a child born in France of foreign parents becomes automatically French on their 18th year, if they are in our country and have been more than five years; this has been true since 1515. Certain candidates propose to limit this opportunity (Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Francois Fillon), or aim to remove it (Marine Le Pen).

For the Front National, this represents making a kind of “acquisition of French nationality (is) possible just through filiation or naturalisation, for which the conditions are elsewhere more demanding”… that which can in many more complex cases, looks impossible. Not only for the French whose ancestors came from abroad several generations ago, but also for a number of other cases – pieds-noirs, those from Alsace, whose families were German at the beginning of the last century…

On the other side, Jacques Cheminade, Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Melenchon want to preserve the right of soil. Four candidates have no position on this prickly subject: Nathalie Arthaud, Benoit Hamon, Jean Lassale and Philippe Poutou.

The French justice department has demanded that the European Parliament lifts the parliamentary immunity of Marine Le Pen and of Marie-Christine Boutonnet, targets of an enquiry into suspected fictional employment of parliamentary assistants by the Front National (FN), Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Friday 14th April from a judiciary source.

The judges at the preliminary hearing addressed their demands to lift the parliamentary immunity of the FN European delegates on 29 and 30 March, specified this source, confirming the information relayed by Europe 1. These demands have been issued from the Paris Bench to the Bench General**, which transfers it, according to the procedure, to the chancellery before being sent to the European Parliament.

The extreme-right candidate in the presidential election has retreated behind her parliamentary immunity in order to block the judges’ summons issued in February and in March. She promises to attend the judiciary hearing after the electoral period. Marie-Christine Boutonnet has not responded to the summons of the ‘financial’ judges at the beginning of March.

Vote in an open session

The demand to lift the immunity that the French justice? Has addressed to the European Parliament is ‘standard procedure’, Marine Le Pen said on Friday.

Examining this demand to lift their immunity could take several months as it needs to be the subject of a vote in open session of the European Parliament. A debate would therefore happen in session, on the issue of which each European Deputy would be called to place an individual vote.

“The European deputy will keep their seat, but they will lose their immunity,” it is explained on the website of the European Parliament, reporting that the revocation of immunity is not a punishment but that “it simply authorises a national authority to investigate and pursue an inquiry.

“The preliminary hearing judges do not expect they will be successful before the presidential election,” France Inter stated with assurance.

The preliminary hearing judges are not able to compel a European Deputy to stand before them like anyone else who is answerable to judiciary authority. For each coercive measure, they have to first achieve the lifting of the immunity granted by the European Parliament. This was the same issue in another case presided over by the preliminary hearing judges at Nanterre, where they reproached Mme Le Pen for having distributed over Twitter images of executions by the jihadist group Islamic State.

Two parliamentary assistants put under scrutiny

A preliminary hearing has been opened by the Paris bench, which follows a parliamentary inquiry underway since 2015. The presiding judges are trying to determine if the Front National has created a system to remunerate its executives and employees with public funds of the European Union through contracts for assistants to deputies.

Following a police search at the FN head office, in February 2017, investigators seized a document leading them to believe that the ‘fraudulent’ was thought to have been established since 2012, and known by Marine Le Pen.

The European Parliament, which plays a civilian part in this affair, had informed the French justice department about the 29 parliamentary assistants. The trigger was their presence in positions listed in the last information chart for France, which throws doubt on their effective employment at the assembly sitting at Strasbourg.

The tax authorities have returned to the second Helvetic bank at Paris, London and Amsterdam.

Credit Suisse announced, Friday 31 March in a statement, that its offices in Paris, London and Amsterdam had become the object of a tax investigation and had received ‘the visit’ from the tax authorities of the countries concerned.

The second Helvetic bank is clear that it is cooperating with the inquiry which is ongoing. According to the Swiss press, the affair started in the Netherlands, where the tax authorities have received documents showing the existence of hidden accounts for purposes of tax evasion, in the opinion of a Swiss bank.

According to the Zurich-based publication ‘Tages Anzeiger,’ the locals of Credit Suisse became the object of a ‘raid’ like paintings and gold ingots were seized in several countries.

Investors, like cows, sheep, zebra and other herding animals, like to do what they see everybody else doing. If the rest of the herd jumps off a cliff, many other investors will follow the herd even if they suspect a hard landing awaits. Because if everyone else is doing it, it must be the right thing to do.

A prime example of this tendency is the recent Snapchat IPO, which we’re sure you’ve heard about but we’ll revisit for illustrative purposes. Despite having access to detailed information about the company’s fundamentals and history – it has never before made a profit – investors piled in when open trading began, leading the share price to rise 44%, from an initial $17 to $24.48. The opening price of $17 was itself above the range predicted by analysts.

There are no words for what Snapchat the company represents. Literally. It cannot even categorise itself correctly. In its IPO prospectus it described itself as a ‘camera company’, which as it has never to public knowledge made and sold a camera is not strictly accurate.

Go in the Other Direction

Value investing defies this ‘herding behaviour’ by taking a contrarian bet on the stock the market undervalues. Value investors look for assets, particularly shares, whose low market price belies the underlying fundamentals. They take a 3-5 year view on the company based on factors like the general outlook for the sector, the company’s debt to equity ratio, sales and revenue history, and sales and revenue projections.

They might dig deeper, and look at how secure a hold the company has over its primary assets – for example, whether they are overhung by a fixed or floating charge. A fixed charge means the item in question is clearly put up as collateral to a single defined investor, whereas with a floating charge the hierarchy of entitlement is less clearly defined.

All of these contrarian bets will be placed within a portfolio which is risk-optimised for the desired minimum return. When we say ‘risk-optimised’, essentially we are treating risk, or volatility, as a tradable item which though we cannot exactly quantify it, we are counting on its yielding us a premium in the long-term. We like risk, when we think we can control it.

Portfolio investors will almost always diversify this risk across several sectors or regions, analysing groups of stocks or indices to see their level of correlation, and choosing those which have historically not been highly correlated. For example, automobile sales and hotel visits might be correlated, if inversely, with the price of oil, or petrol; cheap fuel encourages more travel.

Two sectors which are less likely to be correlated are consumer durables – ie. fridges, microwaves, toasters – and food and toiletries. People will always need to buy groceries, but deciding whether to buy a new microwave or a leopard-print toilet seat is a discretionary choice and likely to bear little relation to how many ready meals they choose to buy.

Why do I find it so easy to spot other people’s faults but not my own?

Both Sigmund and his granddaughter Anna Freud wrote about the phenomenon of ‘projection’, where unpleasant attributes that the ‘ego’ or conscious self rejects because they are socially or otherwise undesirable, are super-imposed on others. The projected attributes could also be personal fears, such as unpopularity, homosexuality, physical unattractiveness, rudeness, stupidity…Often this perceived flaw is present in the object of projection to a degree, but becomes hugely exaggerated to the projector. This tends to be a behaviour of less developed personalities, but everyone can be inclined toward it in times of stress or perhaps due to herding. For example, a celebrity or politician could become the focus for repressed emotions which are publicly condemned in them. Or a nationality or minority group could be targeted.

#projectionisrejection

#ihateyoubecauseihateme

#peoplewholiveinglasshouses

“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”

― John Berger, Ways of Seeing

“What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves — our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.” ― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their object-relations.”

Sigmund Freud

“When two things occur successively we call them cause and effect if we believe one event made the other one happen. If we think one event is the response to the other, we call it a reaction. If we feel that the two incidents are not related, we call it a mere coincidence. If we think someone deserved what happened, we call it retribution or reward, depending on whether the event was negative or positive for the recipient. If we cannot find a reason for the two events’ occurring simultaneously or in close proximity, we call it an accident. Therefore, how we explain coincidences depends on how we see the world. Is everything connected, so that events create resonances like ripples across a net? Or do things merely co-occur and we give meaning to these co-occurrences based on our belief system? Lieh-tzu’s answer: It’s all in how you think.”

― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.”

Noam Chomsky

#causeorcoincidence

#youpaintedawomanandcalledhervanity

#fearunderpinspower

#realityhurts

#famous quotes

#inspiration

#QualityQuestions

2. How can I better rationalize my emotional responses to unpleasant situations?

Rationalization is one of many defence mechanisms people use to deflect an unwanted emotional response. They might do it to appease their conscience, for example to justify socially undesirable behaviour such as internet trolling, shoplifting or bullying. Even outwardly responsible citizens can do this on a minor scale, and psychologist Dan Ariely has done considerable research into what he calls the ‘self-fudge’ effect, and how much people think they can get away with before their social conscience kicks in. He observed that they were reluctant to steal actual money when the opportunity was presented, but objects one step removed from money – stationery, cans of coke – presented less of a moral dilemma. Rationalization can be used to justify self-destructive behaviour, or explain an action which had unintended negative consequences. We need to be careful not to over-rationalise to the extent we have shielded ourselves completely from our pesky conscience; or prevent ourselves from feeling any emotional pain, which can be necessary and cathartic.

#ourbuggymoralcode

#self-fudging

#makeyourownmoralcompass

“People only see what they are prepared to see.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The act of gaining true insights from self – reflection is a futile action for most … as there are easy way out things like self justification, rationalization, delusions and denial which keeps us away from our true self, the inner core and thus we live contented”

Anubhav Mishra

“Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, ‘No, this not real cheating.’ So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that’s what we find, is that we’re basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.” – Dan Ariely

“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.”

Sigmund Freud

“Rationalization is foreplay with one’s conscience.” – Doug Cooper

“The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are..” – Jon Krakauer

#Rationalizationisforeplay

#illusionsbeatreality

#tryselfreflection

#famous quotes

#inspiration

#QualityQuestions

3. ‘When my boss shouts me down, why do I kick the proverbial dog?’

Well fairly self-evidently, it’s because I probably shouldn’t shout back at my boss if I want to keep my job. But bottling up this emotion means it is likely to burst out in some other situation, perhaps against a colleague who chooses the next moment to ask a huge favour. Or against your spouse that evening who asks you, “whatever happened to that promotion?” It is not an emotionally mature reaction, but a primitive impulse that probably derives from a sense of powerlessness; and even if you cannot talk about the bad treatment you have received, it makes more sense to seek comfort or an alliance with another person who can help you deal with that situation. This defence mechanism is termed ‘displacement’.

#peacenotwar

#turntheothercheek

#makeyourenemyyourfriend

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

“All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” ― John Steinbeck

“The opponent strikes you on your cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically, and you hit him spiritually.” ― E. Stanley Jones, ‘Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend’

#dontkickthedog

#warisafailureofnegotiation

#passiveresistance

#famous quotes

#inspiration

#QualityQuestions

4. How to make my biggest weakness a super-strength?

We all have behavioural patterns which can be detrimental and which repeat themselves. One person, for example, might have difficulty being on time; another might be obsessively organized in their work and relationships, and have difficulty being spontaneous and reacting to change. Try to be more aware of repeat patterns in your behaviour and consider if they may be responsible for work or relationship problems. Do you, for example, over-empathise with your co-workers and have a need to solve their problems, such that it becomes a distraction from your tasks? Do you, on the other hand, have trouble trusting your colleagues because you view them as competition, and have issues working collaboratively? With time and a concerted effort, once identified you can focus on altering these self-destructive traits, which are holding you back in the life and work arena. We cannot guarantee they will become your biggest strength, but if you make a real improvement people will notice the difference and respond positively.

#weaknessbecomesstrength

#makeyourweaknessastrength

#tosucceedyoumustknowyourself

“Don’t waste a good mistake. Learn from it.”

Robert Kiyosaki

“Winners Evaluate Themselves In A Positive Manner And Look For Their Strengths As They Work To Overcome Weaknesses.”

“Clearing up your weaknesses is one of the primary reasons we’re here.”

― Robin Sharma, (Canadian writer and leadership consultant)

“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”

Harold J. Smith

#don’twasteamistake

#mistakesarejustlifelessons

#mistakesareforlearningnotrepeating

#famous quotes

#inspiration

#QualityQuestions

5. Are all my emotional responses necessary, or can I control them?

Intellectualization is one of the more mature coping or defence mechanisms, and involves deflecting an unwanted emotional response by thinking instead about the real, factual consequences of that which might cause you to feel sad or angry. Of you could reach intellectually for a solution to the situation. Say there is a delay in paying your invoice, or your annual bonus is in question. You may be beset by feelings of anxiety, frustration, anger at the party perceived to be responsible. None of these are helpful. The former will make you appear powerless; the latter will make you appear rude. Moderate your emotions and determinedly seek a solution. Or say you are sore from a recent break-up. You are wracked by pain, loss, perhaps feelings of low self-worth. But none of these are inevitable. Accept the loss, and count all the ways in which your life will be enhanced and you will be better off without the other person in it. Eventually the reasons for splitting up will crowd out the lingering pain of that person’s absence.

#controlyouremotions

#don’tletyouremotionscontrolyou

#emotionaldistance

“If you can’t control your emotions, then your emotions will control you.”

Anurag Prakash Ray

“Inner peace will prevail in your life if you listen to inner voice and let not others control your emotions.”

Dr Anil Kumar Sinha

“While others may break your heart, they cannot make you live in misery. You control your emotions and, while the hurt can be overwhelming, you have the ability to move on and live to love another day.”

Frederick Babb

“Comfort in expressing your emotions will allow you to share the best of yourself with others, but not being able to control your emotions will reveal your worst.”

“The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.”

Bertrand Russell, (English Logician and Philosopher 1872-1970)

#listentotheinnervoicenottheouterones

#expressyourself

#sharingiscaring

#famous quotes

#inspiration

#QualityQuestions

6. Why do I often take adverse situations so personally?

We return to a concept we have visited before; that of the ‘universal attribution theory’, our tendency as humans to stress the importance of human action in explaining causation. When something doesn’t go your way, or a personal disaster befalls you, the instinctive reaction will often be to say either “It’s their fault,” “It’s my fault”, or “They’re out to get me.” Whether you blame your own mistake or the mistakes – or deliberate action – of other people, reflects and reinforces your personal narrative as a winner, loser, or victim. But… it’s not that simple. There are a huge number of situational factors leading to the outcome, many of which will be beyond your control. Be they political, economic, social, psychological…. so instead of trying to work out who to point the finger at, why don’t you use your energy to find a solution and try and learn how to prevent the situation recurring?

#failureisnotpersonal

#maybeit’snobody’sfault

#lookoutisdethebox

“When life places a wall in our path we have two choices… we can beat our head against it, or we can figure out a way to get around it.” (Randi G Fine)

“Rock bottom is good solid ground, and a dead end street is just a place to turn around.” (Buddy Buie, Southern Rock singer-songwriter)

“Strength doesn’t just come from winning. Your struggles develop your strength. Where you go through hardships and decide not to surrender… that is strength.”

Ghandi

“Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.”

Zig Ziglar (American salesman and motivational speaker)

“Any man can win when things go his way. It’s the man who overcomes adversity that is the true champion.”

Jock Ewing (character in TV series ‘Dallas’)

#adversitydefinesyou

#rockbottomisgoodsolidground

#deadendstreetiswhereyouturnaround

#famous quotes

#inspiration

#QualityQuestions

7. Can I make my own good luck?

Particularly thanks to the proliferation of social media, there is a widespread perception that you can influence your life and story by being unerringly upbeat and full of confidence. And to an extent it is true that people respond positively to positive energy; not only that, but it will help you to make beneficial and strategically sound decisions. Careful though not to let boasting about your achievements overshadow the achievements themselves. After each success you should be planning how to take it to the next stage, not just plastering your success across all social media channels. Can the general perception that you are successful become self-fulfilling? Or does it just feed your ego and stop you thinking clearly?

#makeyourownluck

#don’tlookback

#writeyourownstory

“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

Benjamin Franklin

“Inspiration is one thing and you can’t control it, but hard work is what keeps the ship moving. Good luck means, work hard. Keep up the good work.”

Kevin Eubanks

“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.”

Earl Wilson

“Too often, we miss out on opportunities in this life because we were too busy waiting for them to fall into our lap that we missed them tapping on our shoulder.” ― Daniel Willey

Growth in the third quarter of 2016 seems to be on track to remain consistent with that of Q2, at the identical figure of 2.1%. Which will doubtless engender much self-congratulatory patting of backs among the BOE’s Monetary Policy Committee, for steering the country through a potential capacity surplus and dip in employment. Do they really deserve this round of applause?

There is an opinion held in some quarters that central bank control is the main obstacle standing in the way of the perfect equilibrium that would be achieved if interest rates were allowed to compete in a free market. While I do not necessarily believe that free-market capitalism always acts in favour of the greatest good of the greatest number of people, the tried-and-tested sticking plaster of QE does not reach the deeper systemic problems – something the BOE itself admits.

As well as announcing the continuation of its asset repurchase policy (quantitative easing), the BOE’s Monetary Policy Committee decided in August to cut bank rate to a growth-stimulating – at least in theory – 0.25%. The negative effect this would have on bank’s lending profit margins they hoped would be countered by the Term Funding Scheme (TFS) they were offering to institutions affected.

They elaborated in the August Inflation Report that “the Term Funding Scheme (TFS)… will provide funding for banks at interest rates close to Bank Rate. This monetary policy action should help reinforce the transmission of the reduction in Bank Rate to the real economy to ensure that households and firms benefit from the MPC’s actions. In addition, the TFS provides participants with a cost-effective source of funding to support additional lending to the real economy, providing insurance against the risk that conditions tighten in bank funding markets.”

This is all very good and of noble intention, but it is doubtful this alone would counteract the many factors acting against the free lending by banks to needy applicants. For one, the alternative finance market is proving serious competition, as the nimbler new competitors are far more proactive in sourcing customers, using sophisticated data analysis to find leads; and their pricing algorithms bypass the more thorough risk profiling traditional banks undergo. In addition, they often avoid taking direct liability for issuing the loans, doing this instead through partner banks. By keeping their balance sheets free of these liabilities, they avoid the imposition of different tiered capital ratios along the lines of Basel III.

Let’s get Specific

Interest Rate Risk in the Banking Book (IRRBB) is a quantified metric which is itself the subject of constant, international regulatory scrutiny. In a report released April 2016, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision succinctly explains the complex relationship between different loan products:

“IRRBB arises because interest rates can vary significantly over time, while the business of banking typically involves intermediation activity that produces exposures to both maturity mismatch (e.g. long-maturity assets funded by short-term liabilities) and rate mismatch (e.g. fixed rate loans funded by variable rate deposits). In addition, there are optionalities embedded in many of the common banking products (e.g. non-maturity deposits, term deposits, fixed rate loans) that are triggered in accordance with changes in interest rates.”

An option is linked to a specified contingency which, if occurring, gives you the right but not the obligation to exercise that option. For example if you end up stuck with a loan at 4% interest which was originated when base interest rates were at 1.2%, and then base interest falls to 0.5%, your interest payments will be overpriced relative to the rest of the market. The option might specify that if interest rates fall below a certain point, you can choose to switch to a floating-rate linked to a benchmark like LIBOR. (London Interbank Offered Rate, administered by ICE or IntercontinentalExchange group)

Definitions, definitions, definitions

‘Option risk’ is just one of three defined types of interest rate risk that can occur; the others being ‘gap risk’ and ‘basic risk’. Automatic option risk is when an optionality is included as part of a synthetic product, be it an asset, liability and/ or off-balance sheet item. Behavioural option risk is where the change in cash flow results from the autonomous human decision to exercise an option.

So-called gap risk describes the shortfall that arises when banks’ debt instruments undergo rate changes which occur at different times. Some loans, particularly for construction or infrastructure projects, are staggered so interest payments increase towards the end of the loan’s duration, as during the early set-up phase there is little to no cash flow or income.

Basis risk is classified as the impact of relative changes in interest rates between instruments which are linked to different pricing benchmarks; say for EM bonds over Treasuries, which are priced by different market factors and whose basis points might change at different rates, though their tenors are the same. One might even be used to hedge the other, and basis risk quantifies the effectiveness – or not – of this hedge.

The regulator admitted it was having difficulty persuading banks to fully assess the IR risk on their books, as in their internal assessments they tended to focus on earnings measures over the period under review, rather than economic value measures which examine assets and liabilities right until their expiration. In their guidance the Basel supervisory committee stressed the importance of having both types of assessment compliment each other.

If the late troubles of Deutsche Bank are any indicator, it is that banks can struggle to reconcile their regulatory obligations with taking on high enough risk assets to turn a viable profit. That, and the importance of having a smoothly running infrastructure and back-end. On the other hand, JP Morgan’s recent triumphant quarter shows you can make a killing out of trading bonds, if you know what you are doing.

If you’re the only girl in a group of 5 boys, it’s dark and everyone else is drinking, don’t let the conversation turn to sex if you want to retain your professional veneer. That includes attempts to start conversations about ’embarrassing sex stories’, ‘what robot sex would be like’, and ‘what if they made robot sex really painful, to stop them reproducing and taking over the world’?

2. If you’re going to hand out your business card, make sure you take some contact details back. Don’t leave the ball in their court. They might be too lazy to pick up the racket.

3. Try not to mix business with dancing.

4. Always introduce the PhD particle physics student and his real estate mate to the hilariously honest tech guys who talk like they’re on drugs. How else does a networker get the party started?…

This is me

I am a Cambridge-educated history graduate, with a wealth of experience in writing for businesses in all industries. I am certified in Digital Marketing and Adwords management.
I started off as an aspiring financial journalist, but gradually learned that in this as in all industries the real money was not to be made in telling The Truth, but in spinning marketable variations of it. You can see some of my clients - current and historical - on my LinkedIn profile, which clearly demonstrates my versatility and range of experience. I hope you find my blog informative and entertaining.
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